On his second combat tour, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than 30 Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy’s disposition and were key to the US military being able to take the war to the enemy. This was accomplished by utilizing both new and innovative technology, and tactics dating back to the French and Indian Wars.

This small unit racked up one of the most impressive records of awards for valor of any unit in the history of the United States Army. It came at a terrible price, however; the number of wounded and killed in action was incredibly high. Those missions today seem suicidal. In 1970 they seemed equally so, yet these men went out day after day with their indigenous allies – Montagnard tribesmen, Vietnamese, and Chinese Nungs – and faced the challenges with courage and resolve.

Whispers in the Tall Grass is the second volume of Nick’s riveting memoir of his time with MACV-SOG. Written in the same irreverent, immediate style that made We Fewi a cult classic, he continues his hair-raising adventures behind enemy lines, and movingly conveys the bonds that war creates between soldiers.

Detachment “A” member and author James Stejskal has a new book entitled SOE and OSS IN WW2, No Moon as Witness that will be released in November 2019.

“In 1940, Winston Churchill famously instructed the first head of the Special Operations Executive, Hugh Dalton, to “Set Europe ablaze!.” Agents of both the British Special Operations Executive and the American Office of Strategic Services underwent rigorous training before making their way, undetected, into occupied Europe to do just that. Working alone or in small cells, often cooperating with local resistance groups, agents undertook missions behind enemy lines involving sabotage, subversion, organizing resistance groups and intelligence-gathering.SOE’s first notable success was the destruction of a power station in France, stopping work at a vital U-boat base, and later operations included the assassination of Himmler’s deputy Reinhard Heyrich and ending the Nazi atomic bomb program by destroying the heavy water plant at Vemork, Norway. OSS operatives established and supported anti-Nazi resistance groups across Europe, and managed to smuggle operatives into Nazi Germany, including running one of the war’s most important spies, German diplomat Fritz Kolbe. All missions were incredibly dangerous and many agents were captured, tortured, and ultimately killed  the life expectancy of an SOE wireless operator in occupied France was just six weeks.

In this short history, historian James Stejskal examines why these agencies were established, the training regime and ingenious tools developed to enable agents to undertake their missions, their operational successes, and their legacy.”

A powerful, fascinating, and groundbreaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War.

East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempted to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it.

In November 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades.

As the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall approaches in 2019, Iain MacGregor captures the essence of the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.

Striking where the enemy is weakest and melting away into the darkness before he can react. Never confronting a stronger force directly, but willing to use audacity and surprise to confound and demoralize an opponent. Operations driven by good intelligence, area knowledge, mobility, speed, firepower, and detailed planning executed by a few specialists with indigenous warriors – this is unconventional warfare.

T. E. Lawrence was one of the earliest practitioners of modern unconventional warfare. His tactics and strategies were used by men like Mao and Giap in their wars of liberation. Both kept Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom close at hand. This book looks at the creation of the HEDGEHOG force, the formation of armored car sections and other units, and focuses on the Hejaz Operations Staff, the Allied officers and men who took Lawrence’s idea and prosecuted it against the Ottoman Turkish army assisting Field Marshal Allenby to achieve victory in 1918.

Stejskal concludes with an examination of how HEDGEHOG has influenced special operations and unconventional warfare, including Field Marshal Wavell, the Long Range Desert Group, and David Stirling’s SAS.

Former Member of Detachment”A” Nick Brokhausen has written a book about his time in CCN part of MACV-SOG in Vietnam. The book entitled We Few: U.S. Army Special Forces in Vietnam – Suicide missions in enemy territory with the SOG. The hard copy book will be released on 2 April 2018. It is available for pre-order on Amazon. Click here for additional book info on Amazon

On his second tour to Vietnam, Nick Brokhausen served in Recon Team Habu, CCN. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group), or Studies and Observations Group as it was innocuously called. The small recon companies that were the center of its activities conducted some of the most dangerous missions of the war, infiltrating areas controlled by the North Vietnamese in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The companies never exceeded more than 30 Americans, yet they were the best source for the enemy’s disposition and were key to the US military being able to take the war to the enemy. This was accomplished by utilizing both new and innovative technology, and tactics dating back to the French and Indian Wars.

This small unit racked up one of the most impressive records of awards for valor of any unit in the history of the United States Army. It came at a terrible price, however; the number of wounded and killed in action was incredibly high. Those missions today seem suicidal. In 1970 they seemed equally so, yet these men went out day after day with their indigenous allies – Montagnard tribesmen, Vietnamese, and Chinese Nungs – and faced the challenges with courage and resolve.

This riveting memoir details the actions and experiences of a small group of Americans and their allies who were the backbone of ground reconnaissance in the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It became a cult classic among the Special Forces community when first published over a decade ago. There are no longer any copies of the original edition for sale as they were passed around until they actually disintegrated.

Former Detachment “A” member Colonel Warner D. “Rocky” Farr has just published a book entitled “The Death of the Golden Hour and the Return of the Future Guerrilla Hospital”.

Rocky served as a medic on Team 3 in Detachment “A” in the 1971-1972 time frame serving with Team 3 Commander Hermann Adler Commander and Bob Charest Team Sergeant.

Colonel Farr has a long and highly distinguished career in Special Forces with sterling professional credentials including BSMT, MD, MPH, MSS, FACP, FAsMA, Associate Clinical Professor of Anatomic & Clinical Pathology, Associate Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine, Aerospace Medicine Specialist. He is also a Distinguished Member of the Special Forces Regiment.

Book Overview

Highly classified until only recently, two U.S. Army Special Forces detachments were stationed far behind the Iron Curtain in West Berlin during the Cold War. The units’ existence and missions were protected by cover stories, their operations were secret.

The massive armies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies posed a huge threat to the nations of Western Europe. US military planners decided they needed a plan to slow the juggernaut they expected when and if a war began. The plan was Special Forces Berlin. The first 40 men who came to Berlin in mid-1956 were soon reinforced by 60 more and these 100 soldiers (and their successors) would stand ready to go to war at only two hours’ notice, in a hostile area occupied by nearly one million Warsaw Pact forces, until 1990.

Their mission should hostilities commence was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines, and buy time for vastly outnumbered NATO forces to conduct a breakout from the city. In reality it was an ambitious and extremely dangerous mission, even suicidal. Highly trained and fluent in German, each man was allocated a specific area. They were skilled in clandestine operations, sabotage, intelligence tradecraft and able to act as independent operators, blending into the local population and working unseen in a city awash with spies looking for information on their every move.

Special Forces Berlin was a one of a kind unit that had no parallel. It left a legacy of a new type of soldier expert in unconventional warfare, one that was sought after for missions such as the attempted rescue of American hostages from Tehran in 1979. With the U.S. government officially acknowledging their existence in 2014, their incredible story can now be told.

Styk is also the author of the book The Horns Of The Beast: The Swakop River Campaign & World War I In South West Africa, published by By Helion & Company.

The book,tells the story of the South African Army in its first foreign operations and the German Schutztruppe’s defense of their colony, German South West Africa, during World War I from 1914-1915. It will be available on Amazon this month.

Styk lived in Namibia from 2010 to 2013 and researched the history and battle sites on the ground. He used primary sources, along with accurate maps and charts of the battles, to shed new light on General Botha’s strategy and his opponent’s defense.

Dieter Protsch is currently on a book tour for his book Be All You Can Be: From a Hitler Youth in WWII to a US Army Green Beret. Profits to be used for purchases of pre-paid phone cards for troops oversees.

Memoirs cover the life of an immigrant from his youth in Berlin, Germany, experiencing World War II to his later immigration to the United States and service in the US Army and Special Forces, the Green Berets.

The book covers his experiences as a member of the “Jungvolk” and Hitler Youth during Air Raids in Berlin, evacuation of the family without a father to the East, life on a Trek from the Polish border back to Berlin and combat against the Russian Army. Following the loss of WWII it describes life under Soviet Occupation, bare survival and later flight to freedom from East Germany to West Germany.

Former Member of Detachment”A” Nick Brokhausen has written a book about his time in CCN part of MACV-SOG in Vietnam. The book entitled We Few: U.S. Army Special Forces in Vietnam – Suicide missions in enemy territory with the SOG. The hard copy book will be released on 2 April 2018. It is available for pre-order on Amazon. Click here for additional book info on Amazon

Former Detachment “A” member Colonel Warner D. “Rocky” Farr has just published a book entitled “The Death of the Golden Hour and the Return of the Future Guerrilla Hospital”.

Rocky served as a medic on Team 3 in Detachment “A” in the 1971-1972 time frame serving with Team 3 Commander Hermann Adler Commander and Bob Charest Team Sergeant.

Colonel Farr has a long and highly distinguished career in Special Forces with sterling professional credentials including BSMT, MD, MPH, MSS, FACP, FAsMA, Associate Clinical Professor of Anatomic & Clinical Pathology, Associate Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine, Aerospace Medicine Specialist. He is also a Distinguished Member of the Special Forces Regiment.

Dieter Protsch has published Be All You Can Be: From a Hitler Youth in WWII to a US Army Green Beret. Profits to be used for purchases of pre-paid phone cards for troops oversees.

MG(Ret) Sidney Shachnow – former Detachment(A) Commander is the author of the best seller “Hope and Honor” .

The Autumn Man by Albert Slugocki

Albert Slugocki has recently wrote and published the book The Autumn Man. Included in its contents is his assignment as Team Det-A, and off duty personal life – 1964/1966. Pay particular attention to Chapter #10, titled Berlin – The Good Life.

Detachment “A” member James “Styk” Stejskal’s has published three books:

Masters of Mayhem 16 August 2018Striking where the enemy is weakest and melting away into the darkness before he can react. Never confronting a stronger force directly, but willing to use audacity and surprise to confound and demoralize an opponent. Operations driven by good intelligence, area knowledge, mobility, speed, firepower, and detailed planning executed by a few specialists with indigenous warriors – this is unconventional warfare.

T. E. Lawrence was one of the earliest practitioners of modern unconventional warfare. His tactics and strategies were used by men like Mao and Giap in their wars of liberation. Both kept Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom close at hand. This book looks at the creation of the HEDGEHOG force, the formation of armored car sections and other units, and focuses on the Hejaz Operations Staff, the Allied officers and men who took Lawrence’s idea and prosecuted it against the Ottoman Turkish army assisting Field Marshal Allenby to achieve victory in 1918.

Stejskal concludes with an examination of how HEDGEHOG has influenced special operations and unconventional warfare, including Field Marshal Wavell, the Long Range Desert Group, and David Stirling’s SAS.

Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the US Army’s Elite, 1956–1990 has been released for publication as of 17 February 2017.

Highly classified until only recently, two U.S. Army Special Forces detachments were stationed far behind the Iron Curtain in West Berlin during the Cold War. The units’ existence and missions were protected by cover stories, their operations were secret.

The massive armies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies posed a huge threat to the nations of Western Europe. US military planners decided they needed a plan to slow the juggernaut they expected when and if a war began. The plan was Special Forces Berlin. The first 40 men who came to Berlin in mid-1956 were soon reinforced by 60 more and these 100 soldiers (and their successors) would stand ready to go to war at only two hours’ notice, in a hostile area occupied by nearly one million Warsaw Pact forces, until 1990.

Their mission should hostilities commence was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines, and buy time for vastly outnumbered NATO forces to conduct a breakout from the city. In reality it was an ambitious and extremely dangerous mission, even suicidal. Highly trained and fluent in German, each man was allocated a specific area. They were skilled in clandestine operations, sabotage, intelligence tradecraft and able to act as independent operators, blending into the local population and working unseen in a city awash with spies looking for information on their every move.

Special Forces Berlin was a one of a kind unit that had no parallel. It left a legacy of a new type of soldier expert in unconventional warfare, one that was sought after for missions such as the attempted rescue of American hostages from Tehran in 1979. With the U.S. government officially acknowledging their existence in 2014, their incredible story can now be told.

The Horns Of The Beast: The Swakop River Campaign & World War I In South West Africa published by Helion & Company, tells the story of the South African Army in its first foreign operations and the German Schutztruppe’s defense of their colony, German South West Africa, during World War I from 1914-1915. It will be available on Amazon this month.

Styk lived in Namibia from 2010 to 2013 and researched the history and battle sites on the ground. He used primary sources, along with accurate maps and charts of the battles, to shed new light on General Botha’s strategy and his opponent’s defense. He is currently working on a new book about US Army Special Forces in Berlin, which is scheduled to be published in Fall of 2015.